Women’s soccer players just won the right to be paid equally to their less successful male counterparts

For people like my daughter, this development is transformative — even if it shouldn’t have taken so long

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In a landmark agreement, payment parity between the US women’s national soccer team and their less successful men’s counterpart has just been announced. It marks the end of a six-year feud including a gender discrimination lawsuit the women’s team filed in 2019.

As the father of a soccer crazed 14-year-old daughter, who plays in many of the same tournaments the US players did a few years ago, I know the daily commitment required to reach an elite level. Raised in the UK I, too once harbored the dream of turning pro, training with a top team as a schoolboy. So, rather than outsource my daughter’s training to pricey private coaches I’ve taken on much of the heavy lifting. It’s a role I’ve found increasingly difficult to fulfill.

“You have to try, Dad!” Samara pleaded during a recent coaching session. I was bent over, gasping, my heart about to punch its way through my rib cage.

“I am trying,” I managed. “I’m a lot older than you are.” At 52, and recently divorced, I’d just made a new will.

“No, you’re letting me win,” she said, exasperated. “If you don’t try, how will I improve?”

I played competitive soccer until I was in my late 30’s, when multiple knee injuries forced me to quit. When Samara showed promise at five, I took the ball — literally — and ran, venting my frustration by coaching her. After years of training with elite soccer clubs three or four days a week, year-round, Samara had become seriously good. My ageing bones were struggling to keep up. She wasn’t having it. She saw me as ageless, forever suspended in a faded home movie montage of my physical feats during her earlier years — cliff jumping, deep ocean swimming, effortlessly beating her at soccer.

I wanted to preserve my kids’ childhoods. Despite our long separation, my oldest girl, Milaan, would ask me, “Do you think you and Mommy would ever get back together again?” There was no chance of that. Yet, I felt I could give them stability by doing the things we’d always done with them: playing sports and making my trademark vegan breakfast dish, curried tofu scramble and the healthy green juice they loved. When my weekends with them were over and they left to go back to their mother, loneliness filled my spartan apartment.

After my break-up, married male friends, said, “Get drunk, date tons of women.” They failed to understand that my two teenage daughters scrutinized me more than my conservative Hindu parents.

”You’re on stage all the time around them, especially now,” confided another divorced dad around the same age, whose split mirrored my own. “Always be upbeat in front of them. They’re looking at you as an example of how men should act. Go places with them. Don’t dwell on the past.”

He was right. Amid scrutinizing teenage eyes, there was no room for error.

“Dad, you’re putting on weight,” my youngest admonished, poking beginnings of a paunch one afternoon as we watched YouTube videos. I’d torn my hamstring a few months earlier and hadn’t been working out like I usually did. “You need to get rid of that,” she instructed.

Embarrassed by her comments, I felt like I’d let myself go, getting the kind of dad bod parodied on the Dollar Shave Club commercials. I embarked on a militaristic fitness routine to incinerate the flab so my girls were proud when they compared me to their friends’ out-of-shape fathers. Six months later at my annual check-up, my doctor asked to take my resting heart rate for a second time.

“Do you feel lightheaded at all?” he asked me.

“No, why?” I asked growing concerned.

“Your rate is 44. That’s like a competitive athlete,” he said. “Are you training for something?”

Relieved, I stifled a laugh. “You could say that,” I responded.

A week later I was back on the soccer field, energized, playing one-on-one with Samara, determined to hold back the years with the fast footwork of my youth, gulping in precious mouthfuls of air. I faked to go right and then cut inside to the left. As I turned, I lost balance and heard a pop in my knee. A familiar dread swept through me. In trying to relive my youth, I’d also exacerbated my former injuries.

“It looks like the meniscus,” said my orthopod, who was my neighbor and a high-level soccer player himself, after a quick examination. “We’ll schedule an MRI.”

“Will you be able to scope it out?” I asked, familiar with the procedure.

“If it needs it,” he said, cautiously.

“And then a couple of months’ rehab ’til I can play again?” I asked.

He looked exasperated. “Jeff, you’re 52, not 22,” he said, as if addressing a child. “What’s the rush? Swimming or biking is much better for you.”

Since I’d turned 50, everyone had been suggesting I slow down. I hadn’t wanted to hear it. But I had to concede my muscles took longer to recover and my joints ached, as if a hinge in my back needed oiling when I rolled out of bed.

Disappointing Samara was hard to stomach. I wanted to suspend time for a little longer.

“I can’t play with you for a while,” I admitted to her the following day. “I messed up my knee pretty bad. But I can still train you.”

“How long?” she asked, dejected.

“A while,” I said. “But you should play against your school friends,” I threw in. “And they won’t keep getting injured like me.”

“That’s OK, Dad,” she said, putting an arm around my shoulder. “You should take care of your knee. You’ve taught me everything I know.”

Watching her play later that day, I realized she had far more natural talent than I ever did. She glided around the field as if on rollerskates, dexterously spraying the ball around with both feet, throwing off her opponents with fast footwork. She played on instinct, the way I used to. I hadn’t taught her a thing, only encouraged her. Encouragement didn’t need two good knees, though — just a big heart. And she already had mine.

The difference between us was that, as a schoolboy, I was trained by famous players who pulled up to coaching sessions in expensive cars, having been on television the previous weekend. The step to soccer-playing riches seemed tangible. For my daughter and her teammates, even at the highest level, that had always been impossible — until now.